Challenge mode in BW2 is absurdly difficult to access for a basic setting, so it's hardly surprising most people don't have it. Who makes hard mode hidden behind completing one of two nearly identical games, especially when those games can be played for hundreds of hours and most people don't restart?

Seriously. I really wanted to play challenge mode, so I spent forever digging through ancient forum posts to find the Japanese Action Replay code (it's different than NTSC and for some reason only one guy ever wrote it down), bought an AR, went through a ridiculous process to update that AR, and then had to give up an inch before the finish line because BW2 only works with AR 1.5.4 and it turns out there's no longer any way to update past 1.5.3 if you're not already there.

That.... is really stupid. I know some games have like easy/hard mode and lock *super* hard mode unless you have NG+, but to me that only makes sense if NG+ gives skill boosts and the super hard mode is balanced for that. Otherwise there’s no reason to hide hard mode if people want more of a challenge......

Nope - Pokémon's never really been hard... outside of poor design (ie, Yellow throwing level 50 Pokés at you when all the nearby trainers are in their 30s... seriously, WHY?) or ID10T/Arin Hanson errors.

ie, me not knowing what Ethers or Elixirs were in Blue so I went through the elite four trying to Struggle against Blue, my cousins not knowing what "Revive" meant or thinking to actually read the description...

The AI I do notice tends to be smarter, and the Pokémon are sometimes taking advantage of their movesets, despite that you can cheese it. (Ie, Zoroark cheesing Ultra-Necrozma thanks to its illusion making it seem like a Pokémon vulnerable to a move that it's actually immune to - and the AI doesn't actually learn like a player would...)

Seems like the design philosophy is that the core game should be accessible to kids and you're supposed to go to PWT/Battle Frontier/etc for any challenge once you know what you're doing. Which is fair enough, but it doesn't seem like it'd be that much work to have an optional mode that makes everything follow the same tournament rules so it's not just whose levels are higher.